French Tech, Station F And The Blockchain Incredible Party: An American Gallivants Throughout Europe

Just over a year ago I received an email from the French government with the subject heading, “French Tech Ticket - Congratulations”. As a recipient, whatever plans I may have had for 2017 went out the window. I had to move my entire life from San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley, to Paris, the up and coming center of European innovation. The email arrived December 7th and I had to be there “no later than January 15, 2017”. Little did I know how big of an impact a move to Europe would be for our business.

The French Tech Ticket Logowww.frenchtechticket.com

The French Tech Ticket is an initiative by the French government to bring quality entrepreneurs from around the world to France. As a winner, you receive a grant from BPI France, a government owned investment bank, mentorship, office space for a year via a French accelerator, and a four year visa for the founders of your company.

We were placed in NUMA, an accelerator whose name is a composite of the French words for “digital” and “human”. Created in 2000, there are now sister locations in Bangalore, Barcelona, Berlin, Casablanca, Mexico City, Moscow, and New York. Naturally, this accelerator was a good fit for Bitwage, which focuses on international payroll and invoicing through the Bitcoin blockchain.

Halfway through our first year we learned that we'd be moved to a new facility, Station F. Having heard about this yet-to-be-built co-working space for the first time, I was skeptical about a change. After attending the pre-opening at Station F hosted by NUMA, I was sold.

At the NUMA Pre-Opening Event at Station FJonathan Chester

Walking inside of Station F for the first time is awe inspiring. They have managed to scale the hip, innovative feel of a startup to a building the size of the Eiffel tower, if it had been laid on its side. Total floor space is 34,000 square meters – that's 8.4 acres in freedom units, or the size of nine U.S. Football fields. There are a thousand startups packed into this space. We've already got living space, but this year the developers of Station F are going to open three towers close by with a total of a hundred shared apartments, easing the rapid transition to Paris.

Having a Station F address is the Paris equivalent of a Park Avenue or Beverly Hills location. Being there in the first increment of startups, we could get venture capitalists, enterprises or other types of deep pocketed organizations to come to us, just because they wanted a tour. Reporters flocked as well, and as a US-originated blockchain company we received a lot of free press coverage. The French and Europeans in general love to hear the story of American startups coming to E.U., as opposed to the other way around.

There are things we miss about Silicon Valley, but for every deficit Paris offers a benefit we didn't have there. A flight to Manila, just 7,000 short miles from San Francisco, is a nice fourteen hour chance to catch up on reading. Paris is one of the major transit hubs for Europe and the worst case trip here, to Tallinn, Estonia, is one seventh that distance. The train system is excellent, a pleasure to use, like Amtrak is in the U.S. Northeast, except with easy access to large innovation hubs throughout Europe, such as London, Netherlands and Berlin.

Bitwage LogoBitwage

2017 was a great year for Bitwage, which provides employees and freelancers direct deposit accounts to receive a portion of their wage in digital currency, or to receive wages faster and cheaper across borders. We grew from four full time employees to nine. We launched Inwage, a sister entity which builds websites and backend technology for ICO’s, decentralized applications and permissioned blockchain environments for other companies. Inwage workers are paid and vetted through their payment history on Bitwage.

Having a presence in Europe has been great for a number of reasons.

Networking: We met some of the smartest minds in the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystem at conferences, such as The Blockchain Incredible Party in Ukraine and Breaking Bitcoin in Paris. Blockchain is global and a lot of the smartest developers can be found throughout Europe, both in the west and the east.

Banking Relationships: We opened up bank accounts across Europe and in the UK, obtaining the ability to receive funds in 18 new currencies. Banking in the Eurozone is moving much faster than in the patchwork regulated fifty U.S. States.

Customers: For Inwage, in addition to US customers, such as the on-going Moria Token ICO, we’ve found many customers from Germany and Netherlands. We also have been able to focus more on the European market for Bitwage, with the Eurozone becoming one of our top five markets worldwide.

While Silicon Valley is great for fundraising and the US market is an amazing consumer market, when you work with a product in the blockchain ecosystem that is international from day one, there are many advantages to having a location in Europe. And the competitive fundraising advantage has shifted, thanks to the ICO craze. Instead of needing to appeal to a small group of highly literate gatekeepers, interesting efforts can get funded by having appeal to a group of early adopters. Over $3.5 billion dollars have been raised through ICOs and with the price of Bitcoin over $10,000 and Ether over $1,000 this seems likely to continue.

Bitcoin has undergone a major correction, 40% off from its peak in just five weeks, but it's just a correction, not a crash. Projects at the fringes are suffering, but cryptocurrency's innovative core has barely blinked. 2018 is going to be very different from 2017, but I think no less exciting.

I am the Founder & President of Bitwage, the most popular payroll & invoicing solution built on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Bitwage allows companies to offer Bitcoin benefits to employees and freelancers without any fees. Employees and freelancers can receive any...